1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an alarm for sensing the presence of carbon monoxide in the environment, and automatically initiating an emergency 911 call to a 911 public safety answering point. More specifically, the present invention provides a self-contained combination carbon monoxide alarm device with an integrated cellular transceiver to automatically initiate a 911 emergency call over a wireless E-911 location system to a 911 public safety answering point.
2. Description of Related Art
Carbon monoxide poisoning, smoke inhalation, and fire is a wide-spread and ongoing threat to public safety and homeland security. Although smoke and fire are often detectable by sight and smell, carbon monoxide is known as the “silent killer,” due to its tasteless, odorless, colorless, and poisonous properties. Carbon monoxide is produced by the incomplete burning of solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels. Many appliances fueled with natural gas, liquefied petroleum, oil, kerosene, coal, charcoal, or wood may produce poisonous carbon monoxide. In addition, running automobiles, recreational vehicles, and other combustion engines produce poisonous carbon monoxide. Further, while fire is known mostly for generating smoke, it can also generate poisonous carbon monoxide.
Detecting dangerous levels of carbon monoxide at the earliest stages, alerting building occupants for rapid evacuation, and notifying 911 emergency dispatch operators to summon emergency response personnel are key factors for public safety. However, delay or failure of any one of the key factors dramatically increases the dangers of carbon monoxide, smoke, and fire. Accordingly, reduced physical injury, reduced loss of life, and reduced property damaged are all dependent upon building occupants safely evacuating a building and quickly contacting a emergency dispatch operator to summon further assistance.
Devices for sensing dangerous levels carbon monoxide and initiating an alarm are presently available. Single station carbon monoxide alarms are available in single sensor units, or combined with smoke sensors in one alarm, utilizing AC and/or DC power sources.
Although the above-mentioned single station alarms provide many important features, many drawbacks exist. For instance, in larger buildings containing multiple rooms or levels, carbon monoxide or smoke may be detected in remote or unoccupied areas for unknown periods of time before the occupants are alerted, allowing the carbon monoxide to raise to life threatening levels, or allowing fire to spread. Furthermore, heavy sleeping, intoxicated, persons on medications, and high-risk (e.g., children, elderly, physically challenged, sensory-impaired) occupants may not hear or otherwise respond to the activated alarm sound before being overcome by carbon monoxide or smoke. Even carbon monoxide alarms equipped with a visual alarm or strobe may not awaken this category of occupants due to the aforementioned and other design limitations.
To alleviate the above and other shortcomings, federal, state, and local safety and fire codes may require that newer residences install multiple alarms equipped interconnection means for multiple alarm activation. Alarms are presently available that allow multiple alarms to be interconnected within a building, so when any one of the interconnected alarm senses carbon monoxide or smoke, other interconnected alarms are activated.
Despite solving some of the problems of single station carbon monoxide and smoke alarms, drawbacks exist with the above-mentioned interconnected alarms. For example, although interconnected alarms may alert building occupants to carbon monoxide or fires in remote or unoccupied areas, if the building is unoccupied or vacant, the danger often goes undetected as the carbon monoxide level increases or a fire spreads to out of control. Only in the event neighbors or other observers haphazardly notice the burning building will emergency response personnel be contacted. Partially alleviating these drawbacks, smoke alarms are presently available that incorporate a landline telephone link.
Other hard-wired or wireless interconnected carbon monoxide and smoke detectors are part of household or commercial security systems, which are primarily designed for intrusion detection and other security related applications. These systems may employ numerous components, including of a separate wall-mounted control panel, keypad, wireless receiver, and various wireless security sensors. These systems often comprise a landline telephone with auto-dialer connected to a public switched telephone network, which then automatically notifies a central station monitoring facility upon alarm activation, who then retransmits the alert to a 911 operator. Other security systems provide a separate component that contains either primary or back-up wireless transmitters for alerting a commercial central station monitoring facility. Also, most integrated security systems often use vendor specific equipment and add-on components.
Despite their advantages, shortcomings of integrated security systems containing carbon monoxide and smoke detectors are numerous. First, such systems are cost prohibitive for carbon monoxide monitoring or fire protection, due to the numerous components and sizable installation costs. Because of these costs, non-homeowners or persons with low-income or marginal credit ratings may be unable to afford installation costs and monthly service fees. Second, integrated security systems require skilled technicians to install, test, and maintain. Third, many integrated security systems may not include carbon monoxide or smoke detectors with the basic security system package. Furthermore, these systems often employ a separate landline or wireless auto-dialer component, which requires the user to subscribe to separate landline or wireless telephone service, and utilize off-site commercial central station monitoring facility, requiring additional monthly fees. Still another disadvantage is an off-site central station monitoring facility must retransmit any alarm events to a 911 operator.
A further limitation of all of the above-mentioned carbon monoxide and smoke alarms, is that they are not specifically designed for installation in building structures undergoing construction, or an effective means for carbon monoxide or fire monitoring in vacant residences or commercial buildings. In most residential and commercial buildings under construction, there is no means for carbon monoxide or fire monitoring, often no telephone service, and often no registered street address. The workers on the construction site and persons in the immediate vicinity are the primary means for monitoring potential carbon monoxide and fire dangers. Because such buildings may be vacant during the off-work hours, a build-up of dangerous levels of carbon monoxide or a fire may burn unnoticed before it rages out of control, causing danger to workers, fire damage to the said building, fire damage to adjacent properties, and increased danger to emergency response personnel.
Although security systems that include carbon monoxide and smoke detectors have the ability to automatically summon assistance through a intermediate commercial central station monitoring facility, a key drawback of such systems and existing single and multiple station carbon monoxide and smoke alarms is their lack of effective means for automatic and direct notification to a 911 operator, often referred to as a 911 public safety answering point, of the specific nature and location of the carbon monoxide or fire emergency.
In most cases, building occupants calling 911 reporting a carbon monoxide or fire emergency use either a conventional landline or cellular telephone. But oftentimes these telephones are located inside the dangerous area that the occupant is attempting to evacuate. The main drawback is that an occupant who is attempting to use a telephone is often in a heightened state of anxiety, confused, or injured, so spending time locating a telephone, dialing 911, waiting for a call connection, and verbally articulating the nature of the emergency and other detailed information to a 911 dispatcher can increase the chances of injury and waste critical evacuation and response time. Moreover, the previously mentioned intoxicated or high-risk occupants may be substantially limited in their ability to quickly locate a telephone and effectively communicate with a 911 dispatcher during a life threatening carbon monoxide or fire emergency.
Wireless telecommunications network systems, often referred to as cellular or PCS networks, along with mobile cellular telephones, are presently available. Aside from being a revolutionary innovation for mobile voice and data communications, many other uses exist, such as determining the geographic location of a mobile cellular telephone. Wireless location is important for a wide-range of applications including telematics, mapping and direction finding, and emergency services.
Most landline telephones in the United States utilizing the public switched telephone network have enhanced 911 service capabilities. Most of these landline enhanced 911 systems have the capability to provide the public safety answering points with a call back number and a physical address of the telephone when calling 911. However, with a growing number of households canceling their landline telephone service and going cellular-only, landline enhanced 911 service becomes unavailable to those households. In most cases, using a mobile cellular telephone to call 911 requires the caller to inform the emergency dispatch operator of the nature and physical location of the emergency.
Due to these issues and a dramatic increase in 911 calls originating from cellular telephones, the U.S. Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) enacted regulatory mandates requiring wireless telecommunications carriers to upgrade and modify their cellular and PCS network infrastructures, and make appropriate upgrades to cellular telephones to provide wireless 911 service similar to landline enhanced 911 service. These combined efforts created a new wireless location system concept, called wireless enhanced 911, to pinpoint or track the location of a cellular telephone during an emergency. The FCC mandates consist of Phase I and Phase II standards that require various levels wireless location determination.
Numerous wireless enhanced 911 location system concepts are presently available. Phase I systems generally require a carrier to provide the closest cell site/sector, and Phase II network and handset based systems generally pinpoint or track the location of cellular telephones either by using upgraded cellular or PCS network infrastructure, equipping the cellular telephones with a Global Positioning System receiver. It is understood that because neither the network nor handset based wireless location concepts provide 100% accuracy, hybrid wireless enhanced 911 location system concepts exist that combine the advantages of the two concepts.
It is worth mentioning that wireless enhanced 911 location system concepts are primarily designed and utilized for determining the geographic location of voice-only cellular telephones, although many other devices or uses are possible. As previously noted above with other 911 systems, the intended use of wireless enhanced 911 location involves the user seeking emergency assistance to manually entering the “9-1-1” numeric sequence or some variation into the cellular handset keypad, thereby contacting a emergency 911 dispatch operator to report the emergency. Once a connection is made, the user verbally articulates the nature of the emergency to a emergency dispatch operator. Although mobile cellular telephones are an important tool for general safety and emergency reporting, they still require a human user to operate, and are not specially designed for carbon monoxide or fire safety.
Another issue is that in order to utilize a cellular telephone to call 911 or use wireless enhanced 911 emergency location services, a user is often required to purchase or acquire a mobile cellular telephone, and enter into a subscriber contract with a wireless carrier, which requires an activation fee and monthly service fees. However, persons with low-income or with marginal credit ratings may be unable to afford a cellular subscriber contract. To help alleviate this problem, the FCC issued an order “Enhanced 911 Emergency Calling Use of Non-Initialized Phones (CC Docket No. 94-102/02-120),” governing wireless enhanced 911 emergency calling use of non-service initialized or unsubscribed cellular telephones, which requires wireless carriers to provide basic wireless enhanced 911 functionality for “911-only” cellular telephones, without having to enter into a subscriber contract with a wireless carrier. The FCC requires such cellular telephones to be preprogrammed with unique identity “call back” numbers or mobile identification number so emergency 911 dispatch operators can identify such 911-only cellular telephones. However, these cellular telephones are not specialized for automatic notification to 911 operators in carbon monoxide or fire emergencies.
As described above, presently available conventional carbon monoxide and combination carbon monoxide/smoke alarms are primarily used for alerting building occupants with an audible or visual alarm, and presently available integrated security systems require an intermediate central station monitoring facility, but provide neither a means for automatic and direct contact to a 911 dispatch operator (i.e, a 911 public safety answering point), nor a means for automatic wireless enhanced 911 location determination. Conventional carbon monoxide and smoke alarms also require that evacuating building occupants or bystanders use voice-only landline or cellular telephones to contact a emergency 911 dispatch operator to report a impending carbon monoxide or fire emergency.